Drawing to a Close

It still feels like full summer here. The temperatures for the past two weeks have felt more like July than July did this year. Thankfully there's also been a decent amount of rain along with the heat, and for humidity lover's like myself it's been a last minute gift when I'd all but given up on having a real summer. The days are hot and sticky, evenings are balmy and the sun still seems to linger in the sky. If I ignore the ever increasing number of fallen leaves on the deck I can almost convince myself it's June rather than the waning days of summer.

It's the early mornings which bring reality crashing home that summer's days are numbered. I've been having some odd sleep patterns lately which often finds me awake in the early hours and I can vouch that the sun is nowhere to be seen at 5 am these days. In fact the lazy thing is barely up by 7 am, and each day we have about 3 minutes less daylight. That doesn't seem like much but when you add it up, that's 20 minutes less daylight a week and almost an hour and a half in a month!

Growing things sense the disappearing sunlight better than we do. This time of year the plants are scrambling to complete their mission of recreating their genes; from the maple keys that are turning brown and preparing to launch, to the tomatoes churning out fruit like there's no tomorrow because there really isn't, everything is taking it's cue from the waning daylight.

In my gardens some things are still in full swing and some have given up the ghost entirely. The tomatoes had a miserable year- I seeded late, I planted late and at one point the raccoons dumped almost all of the seedlings when they were still in small pots. For the containers on the roof I started them with less soil in the buckets with the idea of adding more as the season progressed so they would have fresh nutrients- that didn't work out as planned so they still have a lot less soil than they should have and it shows. Coupled with the not so hot weather and inconsistent watering and I have a bunch of sickly looking plants with a smattering of late ripening fruit, most with cracks. Also thanks to the raccoon dumping I have quite a few mislabeled and it's kind of a surprise until the fruit actually ripens!

The peppers on the roof didn't fare much better and the raccoons ate most of the jalapenos before I could pick them. The shepherd peppers in the ground are much happier but have a ways to go to ripen.

On the other hand, the beans were fabulous this year. I've been picking steady stream of green, yellow and purple beans for the whole summer and they are still producing. The edemame did well too. Up on the roof, I had a bumper crop of zucchini but not a single patty pan and only one lone butternut squash before the powdery mildew got them all. Thankfully it hasn't hit the cukes and melons because the biggest delight of the summer is these little jewels of canteloup which, fingers crossed, the raccoons haven't discovered yet. I used the metal frame from an old couch as a trellis and I'm hoping it's confusing them.

Like every year I had great plans to extend the harvest and plant some late season crops so back at the beginning of August I planted some turnip, beet and rutabaga seeds- some in the ground and some in the now empty zucchini bin on the roof. I had high hopes and pretty good germination, but for some reason I lost almost all the seedlings and the few remaining are sad and spindly. A week later I seeded some on the roof and they came up and promptly died as well. I think next year I will make sure to start them in seedling trays and transplant when they are a decent size.

I haven't even done much canning yet this year - a few batches of whole fruit earlier this summer and last week Colette and I did our years worth of dill pickles but that's about it! The rows of empty jars stare longingly at me but I refuse to listen right now. While the good weather holds, I'll be following the call of the beach- there's just 3 weeks of summer left and I plan to enjoy every second of it!

Looking Ahead

You'd think winter would be the furthest thing from my mind in the middle of July. Here in Toronto we just survived our first heat wave of the summer and it was a doozy- temperatures in the mid 30's with humidex values making it feel more like 45 C.  Thankfully I managed to escape the worst of it by running away to Sarnia and living at the beach for most of the week. I have the Russian to thank for keeping the bins on the roof watered while I was away. All looks well up here!

Amazingly the garden in ground needed NO watering- the new raised beds worked even better than I envisioned! The combo of  the  rotting wood I added to the bottom layer, and the buried seeper hose hooked to the rain barrel provided enough moisture that everything stayed lush and green even through 6 days of record temperatures. Turns out those huglekultures really do work!

So why on earth am I thinking ahead to cold and snow? Well for the first time ever my gardens are producing more than we can eat fresh. Yesterday I picked a mess of beans and there are more to come. The zucchini, which are loving life on the roof, are providing a fruit a day. We've been eating onions for weeks, the garlic are almost ready to be dug and the edamame should be ready anytime.Which means  I'm running out of room in the fridge and I need to be preserving some of this goodness so we can enjoy it when the gardens are long buried under snow and ice.

The garlic is easy- as the greens die down, I've been digging up the bulbs and leaving them to cure in the sun porch. I've even braided a few!

Normally I would just freeze any excess beans and edamame  Freezing is my preferred method of storing many vegetables - if you freeze them as soon as they're picked and do it correctly, it keeps the texture and flavour better than canning. However an inadvertant thaw/refreeze would turn them to mush and we've been experiencing rolling blackouts ever since the big storm that hit Toronto at the beginning of the month.. So I'm thinking I will pressure can the string beans and I need to look into how that can work with edamame- likely I will have to shell them first.

In the past I have a had difficultly growing zucchini, which was frustrating, given its reputation for overabundance. This year I am pleased to have a glut and for now at least we've been eating them as quickly as they appear but I suspect that may pale soon. Since it's never been an issue previously, I'm not exactly sure how to preserve them other than relish which I'm not a fan of, or use them in baked goods. Suggestions welcome!

Where Does the Time Go?

I realized on the last day of May, that the month had gotten by me without having done a single post! No welcome to May Day, (which was lovely and warm this year) no updates from the garden (slow to start because of the late spring), not even a mention of my trip to Ottawa and lunch with FarmGal (more on that in a bit)!

When my contract at FoodShare finished at the end of April I was expecting to have so much time on my hands to do things that I'd been lagging at, particularly gardening, canning and writing.The freedom of a wide open schedule! My first order of business was a field trip for another passion of mine - genealogy. A recent investigation had led me to discover that one of my ancestors was actually born in the Red River Settlement in 1814 so I decided to make a trip to the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa. I spent 5 days pouring over records from the Selkirk Papers and that's a whole blog post and then some, but that belongs to another day and blog.

FarmGal and tulips!

I had messaged FarmGal of my visit and she braved the downtown traffic to meet me for picnic lunch which included some of her lovely preserves and a  fabulous home cured ham. The weather was unseasonably warm but worked in our favour as most of the fabled tulips were in full bloom. We had a lovely visit and even managed to squeeze in some photo ops!

On my return home things took an unexpected turn however. The building that houses our apartment is an old turn of the century row building, with our unit being the 2nd floor flat above a former retail space. Over the years most of the infrastructure like wiring and plumbing was redone but a lot of the original structure remains. Our bedroom ceiling had seen a number of leaks from the ancient skylight; though the roof had been repaired, the lath and plaster ceiling had been patched but not replaced. A large crack directly above the head of our bed had been growing ominously for a few months previously but was gauged safe by the landlord. While I was away there were several heavy storms and the Russian pointed out to me that the crack had widened considerably and that section of the ceiling was now hanging a good 6 inches lower than the rest. Of course late on a Saturday night there was little we could do, so I fired off an email to the landlord and the Russian and I set about moving the bed so we wouldn't be sleeping directly under it. We even discussed moving into the livingroom to sleep but I was trip weary and really just wanted to sleep in my own  room and bed. NO such luck however; whether our timing was perfect or the moving of the bedframe hastened it's demise, the ceiling came crashing down just as we finished getting everything thing out from under that area. We were lucky to not be directly under it but we were both startled, covered in plaster dust and soberly aware that the amount of debris that fell could have easily killed us had we been sleeping- 100 year old plaster is thick and heavy as bricks! The remainder of the month was a mess in every sense- all of our furniture and clothing had to be removed while the ceiling was replaced, the entire room had to be cleaned and repainted and the ceiling fan/light was replaced. Even now we are still sleeping the livingroom as there a few last touches that need to dealt with. I tend to function well with chaos in my working world but not so much in my home- frustration and weeping were common place for a few weeks as I struggled to find anything in that much disorder. Gardening was my main solace, as at least out side I could control my surrounds to a point, although I still couldn't control the cold snaps that kept many of my seedlings still in pots.

So here it is June, which is always my busiest month of the year and not surprisingly, I'm way behind in everything!  There's a mess of cooked rhubarb in the fridge waiting to be canned, ditto a bowl of tiny onions that have been brining for over a week.

The tomato and pepper seedlings need to be planted in their containers and join the squash on the roof. The raised beds are at least planted for the most part although I still have  leek seedlings and rutabaga seeds to go in. I hope I can at least manage to take care of all of that before the madness of working with Pride takes over my life.

Happy June!